Good/bad weekend

Good
I sang at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend. John Rutter was conducting. It was very exciting.

Bad
So did lots of other people so it wasn’t really anything special.

Good
I sang quite well.

Bad
The bloke behind me wasn’t so good.

Really bad
This is because he had “had flu for a few days but [he] really wanted to come”.

He looked in a bad way, sweating and heaving. What an absolute divvy. So far I am symptom-free. I will keep you up to date.

Vote time

Local elections tomorrow. Need to decide who to vote for… not much time left!

Can’t vote for the Tories obviously.

Then I stumbled upon “Austerity for who?” at the Labour website… now I would have thought that it would be “Austerity for whom?” but surely I can’t be right, as they must, must have had it checked?

So I can’t vote for them… as they have made me feel stupid. And they are all crooks.

Could vote for the liber… liberal demo… demosomethings. Does anyone know anything about them?

Greens? Bit extreme?

I guess I’ll just put a big cross next to the BNP to make sure they don’t get in.

Trains

Trains are fantastic at getting you from A to B.

You can read a book; you don’t get lost (mainly); you can even sleep, if you’re so inclined.

What they aren’t so good for is getting you to aforementioned point B at time C.

Or even at time D which is one hour later than C. (We could call it C+1 if you prefer!)

It is also less good at guaranteeing you won’t be sat next to E, who smells/talks at you/has a particularly aggressive form of mental illness.

Nor does it stop you from being dismissed rudely by F, the alleged customer services representative at B. (Remember B? It was the destination.)

Anyway, must go, I’ll be at B in five minutes.

Burn after weeding

After a long hiatus brought about by the weeding (which I might revert to calling the wedding in acknowledgement of the extreme age of the joke) I am back in Blogland.

I am also on honeymoon!

It is going very well so far (Rebecca Juliet is in the shower otherwise I would of course be lavishing her with attention) and we are immersing ourselves in the three L’s.

1. Love (obviously!)
2. Laziness (this is probably more a feature of honeymoons that I am on)
3. Leamington

Yes, we are on honeymoon in Leamington Spa and I have picked up a bit of sunburn (curse rowing boats!).

Thankfully it is raining today so I’ll probably be okay.

Famous Blogger Meet Up 2008!

This one was quite exciting.

Two famous bloggers went to the local pub the other day. It was epoch-making.

First of all, we had the incredibly handsome and debonair Chris from www.thechrlog.blogspot.com – you will no doubt be familiar with his genius.

And then there was the insanely cute Ned from www.nedtheboy.blogspot.com – he had the most incredible cap and was 83 times cooler than me. He was shorter too, but I am not sure how long this will last.

We didn’t get as long as I had hoped (to compare girls on either side of the atlantic, for example) but it was great to meet him, and I was impressed with how little he spoke like a Brummy!

(Le Welsh, Molly and Juliet were also there.)

Back at High School

I am currently being forced to watch High School Musical.

What a special film it is…

I hope you are also having a good Christmas.

(… keep your head in the game.)

The dread sprout

We do not buy vegetables from the supermarket. Nor do we buy them from the greengrocer, which would be perfectly acceptable were it not for the gruelling full-time jobs we are forced to hold down by the alluringly alliterative Credit Crunch.

Instead we get a nice man to deliver them in a (recyclable) box. This is all very good as all the vegetables and fruit and salad are grown locally (except I suspect for the bananas and kiwi fruit) and taste appropriately delicious.

His radishes are superb.*

The downside (which is actually an upside if you are relatively freewheeling people like we are) is you don’t know what you are going to get. This has resulted in us having pumpkins, marrows and all manner of exciting things we haven’t known what to do with (soup and stuffed respectively, if you are interested).

Anyway, let’s not beat about the bush. It’s December; we got loads of sprouts. That’s where I’m going with this, as you probably worked out.

So far I have been subjected to sprouts with a roast and a sprout curry. I have not yet suffered sprout marmalade or sprout en croute. But I fear it is only a matter of time…

So, please post your sprout recipes in the comments! (Let’s see if I can get one hundred comments out of this.)

* one for the fans of Carry On, there.

Further adventures in acronyming

So… all this talk of TWOCking reminded me of another pet hate of mine.

Yes, yes, I know I have too many!

TWOC is retarded in the same way as BHCA* is. Because without is one word and so is healthcare. People at work use HC for healthcare all the time - it is inconceivable to me that no-one has pointed the error of their ways out to them before now!

To their great credit, it has to be said, all the healthcare organisations that I researched for this post (i.e. used Google for five minutes) had healthcare as a single word. Well done to them!

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the reason for this is that I had searched for “healthcare” as, of course, you would if you were a normal person. If you search for “health care” then you too will run, screaming.

* British Health Care Association

The T&Ts* of TLAs**

One of the problems with working for the NHS*** is its near-obsession with TLAs.

If I am not thinking about PBR,**** then I am wondering how PBC***** plays into WCC.******

When you are new, you tend not to know what these abbreviations are, and you have to ask. I was, however, excited to recognise a TLA the other day, and promptly shared my knowledge.

I can confirm now, through personal experience, that when someone in my line of work talks about a PSO, they mean a Public Sector Organisation and do not mean a Phone Sex Operator.

I will leave the room full of stunned (and important) people, and my own mild embarrassment to your imaginations.

And, yes, Molly, this is all your fault.

* Trials and tribulations
** Three letter acronyms
*** National Health Service – come on you should have known that one!
**** Payment by results
***** Practice based commissioning
****** World class commissioning

Talking or eating?

I think it was Welshy who first brought my attention to the possibility of having wedding speeches before eating rather than after. And Knig Steffen has also been known to allude to it, albeit subtly.

I am somewhat divided on the issue (insomuch as I can be, given that I am so well-adjusted and all!)

1. I prefer speeches after. (Quite basic this one.)
2. But… I am reliably informed people get nervous about speaking.
3. But… they are wusses, and should get on with it.
4. But… I need to keep my best man happy so he doesn’t infest our special day with vicious lies.
5. But… I will be hungry and so will other guests, and you don’t want them not listening through hunger.
6. But… I don’t want to actually make the other speakers unhappy.
7. But… you can have the starters already out on display as people arrive if you do the eating first, and it might look pretty.
8. But… we probably aren’t having starters!
9. But… People need time for their food to settle down before shaking their bootay on the dance floor.

I don’t know. I suppose the first thing to do is to speak to the relevant parties and find out how concerned they are.

What do you think?! Before or after?